Movement

Marsden Hartley · 1913

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

119.5 × 119 cm (47 × 46 7/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Modernism

Movement stands as one of Marsden Hartley's most assured steps into pure abstraction, a canvas alive with rhythm, colour, and spiritual energy drawn from the European avant-garde he was absorbing in real time. Hartley painted this work in 1913 during his formative years in Germany, where he had immersed himself in the circle around Wassily Kandinsky and the Blaue Reiter group. That influence is unmistakable here: bold, interlocking forms pulse across the surface with an almost musical cadence, the composition balanced between structure and spontaneous feeling. Rather than depicting movement literally, Hartley distilled its sensation — a quality he believed paint could achieve as naturally as music achieves sound. Hartley was among the first American painters to fully engage with European modernism on its own terms, and Movement is often cited as evidence of how quickly and deeply he internalized those ideas during his Berlin years. Our hand-painted oil reproduction is executed on artist-grade canvas by a skilled painter working directly from the original, matching Hartley's layered brushwork, tonal relationships, and the particular weight his colours carry against one another — giving you a work that honours both the painting's historical moment and its lasting visual force.